


The Survival Code of 221B

by solrosan



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Kink Meme, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-12
Updated: 2012-02-12
Packaged: 2017-10-31 00:35:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/337963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solrosan/pseuds/solrosan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>11 rules that might make the life at 221 B Baker Street easier or at least make the shock and surprises milder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Survival Code of 221B

**Author's Note:**

> Each rule was a different prompt over [Sherlock BBC Kink Meme](http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/11848.html?thread=57722184#t57722184). I haven't contributed with any rules, just the incidents that made John pay attention to them. I have tweaked them a little to make them easier to write about though.

* * *

**Rule 1a - Bribery makes things go much smoother.**

“Sherlock, go to bed.” John had gone back to ordering now (after already dismissing it once in favour of pleading). It had taken some weeks before John had understood what Lestrade had meant when he said he was dealing with a child. Surely it was no business of John’s if Sherlock didn’t want to go bed or refused to eat anything containing vitamins; he was the man’s flatmate, not the poor woman who had given birth to both him and Mycroft. Still, he was a doctor and had quickly grown rather attached to Sherlock and self abuse is hard to watch, even if it’s sporadic and immature.

“No,” Sherlock withstood, even though he was just barely managing to keep on his feet, “There’s no time.”

Just the fact that he continued to answer John in a semi-polite manner showed how exhausted he was. The case had been running for far too long now, but Sherlock was too stubborn to realise he would do a better job after some hours sleep.

“Five hours,” John tried, “Just five hours.”

“Three,” Sherlock caved.

“Five.”

“Four.”

“If you go to bed right now and sleep for six hours I'll let you use my prescription right three times,” John said with strict determination even though it felt scary, especially when he saw how Sherlock’s tired brain started to form plans. So he added in a haste, “For experiments only, not for self medicating.”

“Six hours?” Sherlock contemplated.

“Six hours, starting in five minutes,” John said firmly.

“Fine,” Sherlock tried to snort, but ended up yawning, “but you must promise to wake me.”

“I promise,” John said, watching Sherlock stumble towards his bedroom. Hopefully Sherlock wouldn’t do anything to jeopardise his prescription right because this could turn out to be a very handy trick.

**Rule 1b – Blackmailing too.**

Why hadn’t he thought about this earlier? The geniality was in the simplicity of it all. It was almost endearing how quickly Sherlock had returned all the copies of Sally Donovan’s flat keys after John had threatened to call his mother and tell her that Sherlock had avoided her calls on purpose.

**Rule 2 - Lack of supervision for extended periods of time lead to...bad things.**

Honestly, he shouldn’t be surprised. He had spent one night – one! – at Sarah’s and the windows had been blown out. Sherlock used to argue that it was of no fault of his and sure, John could see the point in that argument since it had been Moriarty who set the bomb. But in John’s humble opinion, the incident was still a result of a bored and unsupervised mastermind.

That incident aside, there was still the times when John had left for work in the morning and then come home to find random body parts in various places in the flat. Not to mention the shot wall, the disturbing marks in the kitchen ceiling John still hadn’t dared to ask about, the broken shower handle, the rat experiment under the sink and the seemingly harmless – but unauthorised – use of John’s laptop resulting in a complete re-organisation of all John’s files.

So when these rather minor things occurred while John still remained in London, what had he thought would happen when he left for a convention in Liverpool for five days?

What ever it had been, it had not been walking into the sitting room to find all the furniture gone and what looked like a giant board game painted on the floor. When he looked closer he saw that it was not a board game, it was a map over Bloomsbury and the pieces was severed body parts. From four different bodies.

“Lestrade knows about this, right?” John wondered if he should be worried that he wasn’t more afraid, the natural response would be fright.

“You’re early!” Sherlock greeted him with a wide smile; John had trouble deciding if he looked more like a child at Christmas or The Joker in Batman. “And Lestrade is clueless, as always, that’s why I’m doing this…and don’t worry, Molly lent me the parts. Now go and fetch me the ears, I left them in the kitchen.”

Dumbstruck, John went to get the ears, promising himself that the next time he left London for more than one day he was going to call Mycroft.

**Rule 3 - Kitchen appliances are Weapons of Mass Destruction in disguise.**

Et tu tea kettle. John felt betrayed.

He had just rolled his eyes when Sherlock – sometimes with the intellect of a five-year-old – had short-circuited the whole building by putting a knife in the toaster. A bit more concern had been given when the same toaster had short-circuited the building a second time when it had been dropped into the bathtub to make sure this was really an efficient way to off oneself. (Sherlock had not seen how this in any way had been a disturbing experiment).

When the grater had smashed through the kitchen window due to a miscalculation off pressure John had cleaned up the shattered glass without as much as a comment. The time the whisks had been parts of a poorly made generator, setting fire to the table, he had ordered Chinese and decided to never buy any new whisks – not like they had ever been used for their true purpose anyway.

John had even come to terms with the fact that almost none of the plates or cups or glasses were sanitary anymore.

But this….

“I….I'll buy a new one,” Sherlock said and hesitated for a moment before he placed a hand on John’s shoulder in a clumsy attempt to be comforting (or apologetic?).

“Don’t bother,” John said, still in shock and still with the exploded tea kettle in his hand, “I’ll never trust anything in this kitchen again.”

**Rule 4 - Bail money is a required (and non-tax-deductable...) fund.**

“Sorry John, can’t help you,” Lestrade didn’t look all that sorry, “and quite honestly I’m not sure I would if I could.”

“Come on,” John pleaded, he had passed the line of pride at this point, “It has been four times just this month! Can’t you just let him go this once with out me having to pay half a month’s rent?”

“That’s just it,” Lestrade tried, “He has been trespassing four times in just as many weeks, maybe he needs to stay there for a while this time.”

“To do what? Learn a lesson? Sherlock Holmes? Really?” John said, shaking his head. Wonder if The British Government would care enough to help out? Probably not.

“Sorry John,” Lestrade said again, looking a bit sorrier this time.

“At least it wasn’t you arresting him this time,” John sighed and got up from the chair in front of Lestrade’s desk. Leaving Sherlock in prison was not an option, not if he wanted to continue to live some sort of peaceful life at 221 B Baker Street, and in his mind he changed the name of his pension fund to “Get-Sherlock-out-of-prison-money”.

**Rule 5 - Keep Hazard Control on speed dial.**

“What’s that sound?” John asked, looking up from his laptop, “Or more importantly, what the hell is that smell?”

“I just spilled something on the table,” Sherlock said in his most calming and reassuring voice, the voice that hadn’t been able to fool John since the whisk-incident.

“You spilled it, or you ‘spilled’ it?” John asked and made his way to the kitchen.

“I don’t understand what you’re implying,” Sherlock answered, but John didn’t care because he had just entered and the sight made him almost scream out. Whatever Sherlock had spilled (or “spilled”) on the table had almost managed to work itself through the tabletop with a hissing, frizzling cloud as the nicer by-product. The less pleasant one was the small, blue flames.

“Sherlock!” John yelled, “What are you doing?”

“Calm down,” Sherlock said as he systematically (and rapidly) removed everything from the table, “It’s just a small chemical fire, go and get the fire extinguisher. It ought to work.”

“Ought to?!” John gasped, but hurried to get it any way and three minutes later the fire was out and they both helped with mopping up the foam from the extinguisher. When Sherlock then started to move his test tubes, conical flasks and Petri dishes on to the table again John went to look up the phone number to the hazard control. He wanted to be prepared for the time A) it was a large chemical fire or B) the fire extinguisher they had didn’t work.

**Rule 6 – Animals and small children should not be left unattended.**

Only an idiot would leave a child alone at 221 B Baker Street. A place that had the number to hazard control centres on the fridge was not suitable for children. Or adults acting like children. Unfortunately it was the child-acting adult (or adult-acting child, it was hard to distinguish) that made the flat into a biohazard. And a chemical hazard. And sometimes a fire hazard.

Just how unsuitable it was for beings that were driven by instinct and not sanity was established when John in his naive stupidity bought a cat. A small Norwegian Forrest kitten he decided to name Gray – a dull name according to Sherlock who’d opted for Schrödinger. Before bringing it into the flat John had made Sherlock promise not to experiment on the kitten and, even without threats of telling Mummy the real reason Sherlock didn’t come to Christmas dinner or the offer of prescription drugs, Sherlock agreed.

It took eight days before the kitten had tipped over everything in Sherlock’s kitchen laboratory that was tippable and contaminated the rest. John found it highly amusing, mostly because Sherlock found it so infuriating.

Another three days later when John came home from the surgery he found Gray barely alive under the kitchen table with stinking puddles of vomit around him. Poisoned. The main suspect would, without a doubt, have been Sherlock if he hadn’t been lying next to the poor kitten, stroking it over the head with one index finger. The Sherlock-part of the picture was actually more worrying than the Gray-part.

“I gave him some activated carbon,” Sherlock whispered, “Do you think he’ll be okay?”

“I don’t know,” John said and resisted patting Sherlock the same way he was patting Gray, “I’m not a vet and Christ only knows what he’s eaten.”

“I don’t have anything very toxic out right now,” Sherlock said, but he had still not looked at John.

“Why didn’t you call the vet?” John wondered and he was sure Sherlock tried to shrug, “Well, I’ll do it then….”

Gray survived, the activated carbon had been good, but the habitants of 221B Baker Street decided that pets weren’t for them and instead John gave the kitten to Sally Donovan. If nothing else it could be seen as an apology in advance for the next time Sherlock took her keys.

**Rule 7 – To ensure safety and to prevent contamination, keep a ready supply of tea bags in the sock drawer.**

“What tea did you use?” Sherlock wondered from behind his book.

“Eh…the red ones that we got from Mrs Hudson,” John said, very surprised. That was a very non-Sherlock type of question; useless small talk had never been his flatmate’s strong suit.

“No! Don’t drink that!” Sherlock yelled and jumped up from the armchair, jerking the tea mug from John’s hands. The tea splashed all over the sitting room and John jumped back, startled and slightly shocked.

“What the hell Sherlock?” he said, wiping his hands on his jumper.

“I….” Sherlock started, actually looking a bit busted, “I may or may not have mixed the tea with hallucinogens.”

John didn’t even manage to feel surprised. It had been the logical next step, first the kettle, now the tea. Sherlock was going to rob him of everything he had once taken for granted.

“The blue bags are still safe,” Sherlock ensured him and with an irritated sigh John went back into the kitchen to make a new cup of tea. He didn’t offer Sherlock one, instead he decided to use one of the drawers in his bureau as a second pantry.

**Rule 8 – Don't bother with locks. It just encourages him.**

At first John didn’t think about it. It was possible that he just forgot to lock properly, needless to say, there were a lot going on in his life and some things just naturally slips. When dropping everything at hand to run out to do whatever whenever tended to make John a bit absentminded.

It wasn’t like anything was ever missing. Not more often than any other of his belongings were missing at least (and just half of those times could he blame Sherlock). It was a bit disturbing to forget to lock though; it felt like such an old man-thing.

Maybe that was why he felt a strange kind of relief when he caught Sherlock picking the lock of his desk drawers. The next thing he felt was annoyance and irritation; which proved to him that he’d been living too long with Sherlock since the proper response would be to feel violated.

“Sherlock!” He said in a stern voice, why did he so often feel like he lectured Sherlock? “Those drawers are locked for a reason!”

“What possible reason could that be?” Sherlock wondered, “You keep nothing even remotely interesting in them.”

“Then why do you keep picking them?” John wondered, finally starting to feel a tiny bit like his privacy had been violated. Well, at least he wasn’t as absentminded as he’d suspected. Was that a good thing compared to reality?

“The only logical reason for someone to lock a drawer is that something worth protecting is inside,” Sherlock explained as if John had been Anderson.

“What gives you the right to pry into my drawers, locked or not?” John walked over and slammed the half-open drawer shut. Being uninteresting or not, he didn’t feel like having Sherlock look them through (again….But still).

“I was bored,” Sherlock admitted and threw himself on John’s unmade bed instead.

“Of course you were, but I don’t lock my drawers to entertain you,” John informed him and dragged him off the bed.

“They’re not difficult enough to pick to be entertaining,” Sherlock sighed, sounding like a suffering martyr. “And the content is dull.”

“Then stay out off them,” John provided as a solution to that problem, shoving Sherlock out off his room. What was the chance Sherlock would stay out of his drawers if he left them unlocked? Well, if he didn’t lock anything at least he wouldn’t know when he was searched and then he could pretend he had some sort of privacy.

**Rule 9 – Privacy is overrated and is nothing worth trying to achieve.**

Privacy, John came to learn dealing with the Holmes brothers, was very subjective.

Sherlock loathed Mycroft for interfering in both their lives and John did agree with the younger brother; it was infuriating to have someone looking over one’s shoulder all the time, knowing that not even confidential records were secret. John wouldn’t even put it past Mycroft to make up records and bank transaction and maybe even death certificates if he felt like it. It was easy to get paranoid and a bit jumpy every time a black car slowed down.

At the same time, Mycroft had never walked into the bathroom while John was taking a shower or invited himself to one of his dates or shown up at the surgery during a patient consultation. Neither had Mycroft used his computer (although he might have had it hacked), watched over him when he slept just to study movement during REM-sleep or used his phone for obscure text messaging. All of which Sherlock had done.

Having both these men in his life John had no other choice than to let go of the concept “privacy”. When accepting this, John stopped closing the door to the bathroom all together.

**Rule 10 – If something disappears, don't try to look for it. You don’t want it back….**

“Are you looking for something?” Sherlock wondered from the door to the sitting-room.

“Not one of your best deductions,” John said a bit annoyed after having efficiently turned the entire room up-side-down in search for his gloves.

“It was not a deduction, it was a simple question,” Sherlock snorted.

“I’m looking for my gloves,” John answered in forced politeness, “Have you seen them?”

“The black leather ones?” Sherlock said in a way that caught John’s suspicion. No wonder he hadn’t found his gloves under the sofa or behind the armchair cushions, he should have been looking in the fridge or the microwave.

“Yes, where are they?”

“You can borrow my gloves,” Sherlock suggested.

“I’ll take my own, thank you,” John said determined.

“I might have used them to grow some fly larva,” Sherlock said, actually sounding as if he wasn’t sure. John wondered what the other alternative was: rat babies again?

“Why didn’t you use your own?” John tried to sound composed and calm, but he heard that he just sounded angry.

“You have thicker fingers than I do,” Sherlock explained and shrugged.

“Give me your gloves,” John ordered with a sigh, he lived in the Bermuda triangle of…well…every possible noun you could think of. “Sanity” being one of them.

**Rule 11 – Moral flexibility is a requirement.**

When had he become this man?

John had always prided himself of being a law-abiding, tax-paying citizen (even if it sounded really, really beige). He was a doctor, he saved lives. Even in Afghanistan he had saved lives. John Watson was a good person. Since he had moved in with Sherlock he had killed a man, he had broken in to various places, he had become a pretty good pick-pocket, not to mention the repeated times he had lied to the police.

As he was typing up Sherlock’s (their) latest case he paused for a moment and looked over at Sherlock who finally had fallen asleep on the sofa after getting permission to use his prescription right again tomorrow. Oh, right, that was yet another thing that the pre-Sherlock John would have found impossible to even consider. Of course, pre-Sherlock John had no reason to do any of the things post-Sherlock John did that was slightly out side the law.

Pondering on this for a moment, post-Sherlock John realised that some decisions that might have been on the wrong side on the black-and-white moral scale could be perfectly right in the more greyish moral scale that actually existed in the world.

At least he still paid taxes.


End file.
